Mugger facing jail over death of 100-year-old Nazi camp survivor
A MUGGER has been convicted over the death of a frail 100-yearold survivor of a Nazi prison camp following a street robbery.
Self-confessed heroin addict Artur Waszkiewicz knocked Zofija Kaczan to the floor during the attack, took her handbag and left her to bleed in the middle of the road as she made her way to church on May 28 last year.
Polish-born widow Ms Kaczan had survived a Nazi labour camp during the Second World War, in which she was forced to work in factories and was even sentenced to death on her birthday.
She suffered multiple injuries in the attack, including a fractured neck and cheekbone. Ms Kaczan died from pneumonia in hospital on June 6 – a condition brought on by the injuries she sustained in the attack.
A jury of seven men and five women at Derby Crown Court found Waszkiewicz guilty of killing her close to the junction of St Chads Road and Empress Road in Normanton, Derby.
They deliberated for just over two hours before unanimously convicting Waszkiewicz of manslaughter and robbery.
The defendant, wearing a black velvet jacket and velvet slipper shoes, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the verdicts were delivered.
Addressing the jury, the judge said: “The sentence will inevitably be one of lengthy imprisonment. Mr Waszkiewicz knows that.”
The centenarian had been separated from her family in Poland during the war, but had managed to “find peace” with her husband after coming to Derby in 1948.
Friends said she did not want to celebrate her 100th birthday because they day marked the same day of the year she had been sentenced to death by the Nazis. Waszkiewicz was caught on CCTV driving a Seat Leon car he bought from his father minutes before robbing Ms Kaczan – slowing down as soon as he saw a “small, vulnerable” woman on her own.
His trial heard he needed an “easy target” to steal from so he could meet a drug dealer a short time later to buy £20 of heroin.
The force he used in the attack ripped the handle off the handbag, inflicting significant bruising on Ms Kaczan’s arm. Opening the case, prosecutor Kate Brunner QC said: “She was attacked, she was thrown to the ground and her handbag was snatched from her.”
Police arrested Waszkiewicz, who was also born in Poland, after his fingerprint was recovered from a receipt in the bag.
He fled the city and hid under a bed at his mother’s house in London to try to avoid arrest.
The jury heard he was so desperate for cash that he had tried to sell his dog. The trial was told the 40-year-old had a number of previous convictions including shoplifting, creating false identification documents and one offence of battery.
He denied both charges, saying he had found the green handbag in the middle of the road, picked it up, and disposed of it at a wellknown fly-tipping area because there was no cash.
A spokeswoman for the Polish community of St Maksymilian Kolbe, the church Ms Kaczan attended, said: “Despite the pain and suffering that she was in for the last week of her life, she had the capacity to pray for her attacker before she died.”
Waszkiewicz, of Shepherd’s Bush, west London, will be sentenced today.
She had the capacity to pray for her attacker before she died.
The Polish community of St Maksymilian Kolbe.